All about the journey

Today was the last day of my weekend of riding, and I was reminded that, like life, riding a motorcycle is all about the journey, not the destination.

We started off today with brunch at a lakeside restaurant on Grass Lake, very near where we stayed each night on this trip. While it took us an hour to get to the party in Milwaukee every day, it was very restful to be able to come home to a quiet place where the sound of the cicadas was the loudest thing.

I started brunch with possibly the best Bloody Mary I’ve ever had. They call it the Shipwreck, and it comes with a skewer of shrimp, ham, mushroom, olive, cheese and a pickle spear. It was almost a meal in itself.

Full of food and ready to rejoin our biker brothers, we headed back to the R&R Crossing Saloon, where we had had lunch on our way out. On Sundays they have a cookout and live music, and we reunited with my host’s friends.

On my earlier visit I had put a pin in the map for my hometown of Austin, and when I checked it this time, I saw there was still just one other Texas visitor.

We hung around for a couple of hours of blues, beers and fellow bikers, then headed back to Chi Town with our friends.

Of course, we couldn’t head directly home; there had to be several stops along the way. This meant I kept saying goodbye to my new friends only to find myself swapping stories of the road with them again a few miles down the road. But finally it really was time to head for home, and we said our final farewells.

Tomorrow I return to Austin, happy to have made the pilgrimage to Milwaukee, made new friends and been inspired to start riding my own bike more. While I love the actual feeling of riding my bike, ultimately it’s about the things I experience along the way that add to my life.